William Fagg and the Study of African Art

William Fagg and the Study of African Art 14.00 – 18.00, Friday 24 April 2015 (with registration from 13.30) 09.30 – 17.30, Saturday 25 April 2015 (with registration from 09.00) Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN ABSTRACTS AND BIOGRAHIES Professor John Mack (Professor of World Art Studies, UEA, Chairman of UEA’s Sainsbury Institute for Art) John Mack is Professor of World Art Studies and Chairman of the Sainsbury Institute of Art at the University of East Anglia. He joined the British Museum/Museum of Mankind in 1976 eventually specialising in the collections from Central and Eastern Africa and the western Indian Ocean. He was Keeper of Ethnography from 1991 until 2004. Professor John Picton (SOAS) John Picton is Emeritus Professor of African Art, School of Oriental and African Studies, London University, where he was employed from 1979 until 'retirement' in 2003. Before SOAS he worked for the British Museum Dept of Ethnography (Museum of Mankind) 1970-79, and the Nigerian government Department of Antiquities 1961-70. Professor Philip Peek (Drew University) Benin City and Beyond: William Fagg and the 'Lower Niger Bronze Industry' When William Fagg enthusiastically proposed the label of “Lower Niger Bronzes” for those Benin works he felt did not belong among the famous court busts and plaques, he could not have known how many copper-alloy objects would be added to this group. My research has revealed hundreds of works which have come to be called “Lower Niger Bronzes” including bell heads, leopard skulls, and humanoid figures. We are grateful to Fagg for highlighting this category but perhaps he separated too many works from the court corpus. I propose returning pieces such as “The Hunter” to the Benin court; but pursuing other works as products of several still unlocated “Lower Niger Bronze Industries.” Additionally, many of these exceptional works may pre-date the classic Benin court bronzes. Current research on a unique group of bell heads apparently related to the Osun religious complex in Benin City gives substance to such a claim. The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN tel +44 207 848 2909/2785 web http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/index.shtml In addition to numerous articles on African expressive behaviour, especially visual and verbal arts and divination, publications include several edited volumes: African Divination Systems: Ways of Knowing (1991), Ways of the Rivers: Arts and Environment in the Niger Delta (co-edited with Martha Anderson) (2002), African Folklore: An Encyclopedia (co-edited with Kwesi Yankah) (2004), Divination and Healing: Potent Vision (co-edited with Michael Winkelman) (2004), Twins in African Cultures: Double Trouble, Twice Blessed (2011), and Reviewing Reality: Dynamics of African Divination (2013) (co-edited with Walter van Beek). Angela Rackham, (Independent Scholar) Revealing Sculptures: The Nok Terracottas in Time and Space. A discussion of the evidence relating to the 'Nok Culture' of Nigeria. Past excavations and present research will be reviewed in an attempt to better understand those enigmatic pre-historic inhabitants of central Nigeria. Angela Rackham worked as a government archaeologist in Nigerian Federal Department of Antiquities from 1967 to 1976. Currently she is working on archive material relating to the Nok Culture and the iron smelting traditions of Nigeria. Professor Rowland Abiodun (John C. Newton Professor of the History of Art and Black Studies, Amherst College) William Fagg: A Visionary in African Art Studies. Perhaps more than at any other moment in the history and study of African art, William Fagg’s prophetic statements challenge all Africanist art scholars and in particular, those already moving away from the study of ‘traditional’ or ‘pre-colonial’ art, so-called, for the new but still developing and uncharted field of ‘global’ art. Fagg’s observations force us to examine how much progress we have really made in the study of African art since his time. Could any lessons learned from the past be relevant today? For example, is the study of ‘meaning’, still as important today as Fagg affirmed in his work? He writes: The study of meaning in African … art is at a rudimentary, not to say primitive, stage. Collectors have generally been content at most to record the overt content (such as ‘figure of a woman with two children’), or if they do more (“the earth goddess”) are often merely reproducing European conjectures. These, however, are still within the realm of subject-matter, whereas meaning or real subject is to be looked for within the realm of ideas, which are the province of philosophy. It is in this crucial field of tribal philosophy that our pilgrim in search of meaning in art finds himself face to face with a virtual desert, a dearth of knowledge … He continues: … [W]e should note that a philosopher equipped only with European philosophical systems will be of little use in filling the lacuna; … (1973: 161) Rowland Abiodun is John C. Newton Professor of Art, the History of Art, and Black Studies at Amherst College, Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author of Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art (2014), What Follows Six Is More than Seven: Understanding African Art (1995); co-author of Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought (1989), Yoruba Art and Aesthetics (1991), and Cloth Only Wears to Shreds: Yoruba Textiles and Photographs from the Beier Collection (2004); and co-editor of The Yoruba Artist: New Theoretical Perspectives on African Arts (1994). Abiodun was a consultant for, and participant in, the Smithsonian World Film, Kindred Spirits: Contemporary Nigerian Art. A former member and chair of the Herskovits Book Award Committee of the African Studies Association, Abiodun has also served on the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association and as the President of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association. He chaired the Executive Board of the Five College African Scholars Program, Amherst, Massachusetts, and has been interviewed by the BBC World Service on the Art of Africa. In 2011, he received the Leadership Award of the Arts Council of the African Studies Association in recognition of his excellence, innovative contributions, and vision in the fields of African and Diasporic Arts. The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN tel +44 207 848 2909/2785 web http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/researchforum/index.shtml Dr Charles Gore (SOAS) Commemorating William Fagg: Commemoration, Memory-Making and Benin Art. William Fagg highlighted the royal court art of Benin as a means to challenge the then current notions of African art. This paper offers a revisionist account of Fagg's approach to Benin art by considering the wider range of artefacts made by brass casters. It proposes that much of it is ignored in favour of a particular canon that has maintained by narratives of expropriation, whether of British empire or postcolonial claims of repatriation. It argues that a royal hegemony over subaltern groupings was not reified by the royal arts in the palace, to which an elite had access, but achieved through the corporate role of brasscasters in performing and supplying these other artefacts used in funerary rites of Edo families. It is through these means that memorialisation and commemoration was achieved and linked to that of the reigning dynasty, enabling a dialectic relation between the king and the many differentiated communities over which he exercised authority. Dr Charles Gore (SOAS) has carried out extensive research for 30 years at Benin City in Edo state working with practitioners of the local indigenous religion and with brasscasters; and also carried out research in Anambra state and other parts of southern Nigeria. He was the consultant for Artist Unknown (1995) a BBC film made about the arts of Benin City. He is currently researching on early histories of photography of Nigeria. and West Africa. Dr Barbara Plankensteiner (Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Weltmuseum Wien) African Art and William Fagg's Contemporaries in Austria. By looking at African art research in Vienna I try to situate William Fagg’s work until the 1970s in a larger framework of the scholarly discourse of his time. With a specific focus on Etta Becker-Donner (1911- 1975), Annemarie Schweeger-Hefel (1916-1991) and Herta Haselberger (1927 - 1974) and their specific research interests and approaches I will analyse how these three Austrian researchers influenced by German culture historical anthropology traditions studied African art from a different perspective. By coincidence in Austria this scholarly field was occupied by three ladies with different disciplinary background. Two records of connection and interaction will be the starting point for this unusual contextualization of Fagg’s oeuvre: a personally posted presentation copy of On the Nature of African Art to Becker-Donner and Fagg’s comments on a 1961 article of Haselberger on the Method of Studying Ethnological Art. Barbara Plankensteiner is deputy director and chief curator at the Weltmuseum Wien, Austria, and lecturer at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. Her research centres on African material culture and art, collection history and museum representation. She was lead curator of the international exhibition Benin – Kings and Rituals: Court Arts from Nigeria and editor of the accompanying book.

Load more